Ekkah are two friends with one name (sort of): Rebekah Pennington and Rebecca Wilson, a Brum-London duo who describe their sound as "pop/girl funk with a big, polished sound". Their first track, 7am, gained them some online attention, but Figure It Out is a considerable advance. Some have hailed it as a return to 90s urban styles, with references in some early reviews to R&B, even G-funk, but more than either of those it recalls mid-80s post-disco, with its walking bassline, sad-sultry vocals, chiming keyboard motif and smart production. If it had come out in 1985, Tony Blackburn would have played it between Loose Ends and Change.

If you liked Richard Hawley’s lugubrious south Yorkshire take on epic 60s pop, you’ll love the Hosts, a besuited Sheffield five-piece whose debut album Softly Softly features a couple of tracks produced by Hawley. The band – who have toured with Paul Weller and are about to support Suede – have ambitions that could be described as epic: at the end of last year they released a cover of All I Want for Christmas Is You, Mariah Carey’s homage to the Ronettes, while the rest of their output is redolent of Roy Orbison crooning mournfully yet manfully over mountain-high rhapsodies worthy of Spector.

Memory Maze is the alias of Gavin Ellis, a London-based singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer specialising in shoegaze heartbreak. Like a Mirage is the forthcoming single, but there’s also an album due later this year if you’re in the mood for psych-tronic melody and melancholia. By turns spangly and spectral guitar, special FX, sturdy beats contrasted with wan, washed-out vocals and minor-key chords – those delighted by the return of Slowdive, and cult aficionados of Sweden’s criminally neglected Radio Dept, will be in their element.

Broods are major-label signees (Polydor in the UK, Columbia in the US), a brother-and-sister act – comprising Georgia (vocals) and Caleb Nott (gadgets) – from New Zealand, and they boast the involvement of Joel Little, Lorde’s producer, which will guarantee them at least a few column inches. Their single Bridges is a bit of a Royals in that it has already been a hit down under, and could well repeat that success here. Musically, it’s more Chvrches/Wet with a hint of Haim (with whom they’ve toured): totally blog-adorable, all synth atmospherica and singing that seems suited to church while alluding to darker urges. A million SoundCloud listeners can’t be wrong.

Timoleon Veremis is a Greek musicology and philosophy student turned singer/guitarist now living in London who writes electronic pop songs inflected with folk and other flavours, about everything from love and death to the recent upheavals in his home country. “This isn’t protest music. This isn’t the Clash,” he warns. Maybe you should just file under "brainy". There are lyrical nods to Plato and Homer, tunes inspired by Bernardo Bertolucci movies and allusions to Steve Reich and Philip Glass. But don’t be alarmed: there are pop melodies on Global, his band Leon of Athens’s debut album – produced by Tony Doogan (Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian) – that should appeal to fans of MGMT and Metronomy.